Tales of a Female Nomad (10 page)

When we get back to Managua, I move in with Doña Juana. Marco lives two houses down. We all share a big yard filled with cast-off car parts and used paint cans that occasionally become drums under the energetic banging of Marco’s seven children from age one to age fourteen. Ramón, the oldest, will be drafted into the army when he is seventeen.

Marco and Teresa argue a lot about the war, the one that the U.S. is sponsoring. She wants to send Ramón to the United States instead of to the army. Marco, an ardent Sandinista, who is proud of the revolution that he fought in, asks, “Who will defend our country if not the youth?”

Teresa tells me, “All I can think about is Ramón in the mountains, cold and hungry, and in constant danger of being killed. I don’t want my son to come back in a box.”

After two months of living with Marco’s family, I leave Nicaragua briefly for a visit with my parents and my kids. I also meet with Frank Sloan, an editor friend in New York. Over breakfast at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, to the live piano tunes of Strauss and Mozart, I tell Frank Nicaragua stories. He stops me midway through a story and asks if I’ll write a book about my experiences.

I’m excited. What a great chance to present another perspective to American youth. I’ll write it from the perspective of young people in Nicaragua.

A few days later I load up my book bag with a tape recorder, a pile of tapes, and a bunch of pens and notebooks. It’s great to be going back to a place where I already have friends. Marco is meeting me at the airport.

As I walk outside the modern air terminal, I look for him. Thirty minutes later, I am still waiting.

Nicaraguan time is different from time in the United States; it’s much more relaxed.
En punto,
on the dot, never is. A two o’clock appointment often means that you’ll meet at three or four or five. “Later” can mean days. “I’ll stop by tomorrow” can sometimes mean weeks. So I wait.

An airport bus comes by and the driver asks if I need a ride. I shake my head and wait some more. Another half hour goes by. The bus does three more swings before it stops again and the door opens.

“Come on,” says the driver. “We’ll take you to the Intercontinental Hotel.”

The hotel is closer to where I’m going than the airport is, so I climb in.

As we speed down the road toward the Intercontinental, the driver asks if I am here to work; he’s used to picking up volunteers, mostly Europeans, who have come to help Nicaragua.

“I’m writing a book about young people in Nicaragua,” I tell him.

“Oh,” says the driver. “I have kids. Would you like to meet them?”

“Sure, why not?”

Nicaraguans are the friendliest people in the world. Sometimes, when I ask directions, people walk me to where I’m going. Strangers on the street invite me into their homes. Others just walk alongside me, wanting to talk. And now, a bus driver is taking me to meet his kids.

He swings off the highway and begins maneuvering his monster bus through narrow streets. He turns down dirt roads and winds around shack-like houses on what appears to be more a footpath than a road. As we move, we kick up swirls of dust in every direction. People rush out of their houses to stare. I feel as though I am on board a runaway bus in a TV cartoon. Then, finally, he stops and we get out.

I meet his kids and his wife, and I drink a
fresca
(tastes like Kool-Aid) while sitting in a rocking chair on a dirt floor.

“OK,” he says half an hour later. “Now, where can I take you.”

Ten minutes later, my private runaway bus pulls up in front of Doña Juana’s house. The family, the neighbors, and everyone passing by swarm around us, as amazed as they are impressed by the giant bus that has delivered me.

Marco’s yellow taxi is a few meters inside the gate. The hood is up and half the parts are on the ground. Marco is stretched out in a hammock.

“Rita,
hola. Cómo estas?
” he says, greeting me warmly, as though I am a wonderful surprise. Then he guffaws his endearing and boisterous laugh. No mention is made of our missed airport date.

I give him an angry look and walk inside to hug Doña Juana. He could have sent a message. For two days I refuse to talk to Marco. Then I forget about it. It isn’t the first time he’s been late; and it isn’t the last time he stands me up. I know it isn’t me; it’s Marco. I learn to accept him as he is. It ought to be an advantage to share a yard and family with a cab and driver. No such luck.

As part of my research for the book, I decide to go to Quibuto, a village in the war zone that was attacked three months ago. But I don’t want to go alone. Marco is unavailable. He’s still working on his cab.

While I’m trying to figure out what to do, I meet a photographer from Spain who has a friend who has a car. It’s a business deal. I pay expenses, he drives and takes pictures. And if there are some good photos, we’ll try to sell them to my publisher.

The first day we drive to a town about two hundred miles from Managua and an hour’s drive from Quibuto. We decide to save the drive to Quibuto for the morning. At 8:05 we arrive at the army post with our letter of permission. (It took days of standing in line to get the proper documents.) The soldiers study the letter.

“Your permissions are in order,” we are told, “but foreign journalists can’t drive the Quibuto road until after 10:00.”

“Why is that?” asks the photographer.

“If the road has been mined overnight, the mines will be triggered by military vehicles or Nicaraguans before you get there. We don’t want foreign journalists getting blown up.”

For the first time since I came to Nicaragua, I’m scared. Mines that are planted at night by the Contras become part of the thousands of bumps in a dirt road during the day. We have been told to look for bumps as we drive; but it’s the rainy season and the road is nothing but ruts and bumps and holes and rocks and tire tracks. There’s not a chance we’d be able to tell the difference between a mine bump and an ordinary bump in the road. So we settle for trying to maneuver our low-slung car without scraping its bottom.

It is nearly 11:00 when we reach the turnoff to Quibuto. The road is blocked by more soldiers with guns slung over their shoulders. They inspect our permission letter and wave us on.

The photographer looks off into the tree-filled hills. “This kind of terrain is the perfect cover. There’s no way you can tell if there are Contras in those trees or behind those hills.”

One eight-inch-deep river and thousands of bumps later, we see the village. As we get closer, we notice a jumble of men, women, dogs, chickens, and kids about twenty yards from the road in an open field. We get out of the car and walk toward the crowd. There is a bright red mass of color in the center of the activity.

When we get closer, we realize that the red mass is a slaughtered steer that is being cut up for meat. The animal has been skinned, and the skin is spread out on the ground like a bloody leather blanket. The trunk of the steer, still warm, is resting on the skin. Only the head looks as if it was once alive. It is still attached to the carcass, the eyes staring out at the crowd. Off to one side is a giant, white misshapen ball, three times the size of a basketball. I ask what it is.

“The stomach,” says a man. “It will be cleaned and the lining will be used to make rope.” He shows me a braided rope made from stomach lining.

Two men are cutting off hunks of meat and sending them up to the porch of a house where they are being sold. Every eight days, we are told, they butcher two steers for the two thousand residents. In Managua, buying meat means standing in line with your plastic bowl, sometimes for five hours. In Quibuto, it means hanging around, gossiping, flirting, talking while the steers get chopped up. There’s definitely an advantage to country living. If it weren’t for the war.

A woman named Marisa comes over to talk to us. When we tell her why we are there, she takes us around to show us the damage the Contras did when they attacked three months ago. During the five-hour siege, they killed one man and destroyed fourteen houses and five public buildings, including the health center and a meeting hall. They shot up the school and blew up a brand-new truck that the community had just bought. They destroyed a food storage warehouse that had just been stocked. And they raided and machine-gunned the walls of the children’s dining hall that had been inaugurated only a few days earlier, the project of a group of people from Spain that was to have provided milk and a balanced meal once a day for the children of the village.

As we wander around the village, Estela, a teacher, and her seven-year-old daughter, Geysel, join us. When Estela discovers that we are planning to be there for several days, she invites us to stay in her house. We accept.

The house is made of sticks and mud and corrugated metal sheets. The floor is dirt and, like the other homes in the village, there are no glass windows, only a wooden-hinged square that swings in and out. Nor is there electricity. A Contra attack blew up the power source for the whole village three years ago and it’s never been fixed.

On the morning of the attack, Estela and her family were inside their house. They listened, terrified, to the shooting from the guns and the explosions from the hand grenades. They smelled the smoke from the burning buildings. And they heard the Contras screaming for Estela. Somehow the Contras had found out she was a teacher and they were trying to find her house.

While the family held each other in terror, the Contras searched other houses, asking for her. They eventually kidnapped eight villagers: a fifteen-year -old boy, his twelve-year-old sister, a teacher, and five others. All but the teacher eventually escaped. The teacher has never returned.

Later I meet a twelve-year-old girl and I ask her why she thinks the Contras are doing this?

“I don’t know,” she tells me. “I think the United States wants our land and our resources. It’s the United States that gives the Contras their weapons, you know. But I really don’t understand why they want to kidnap our children.”

Back in Managua, everyone is getting ready for the First Communion of two of Doña Juana’s granddaughters. Doña Juana is sewing the dresses. Her arthritis has been bothering her all month, and she wanted the tailor shop down the street to do the sewing, but their Singer sewing machines need parts. Doña Juana is awake until two in the morning finishing up the final stitching.

Before we go to church, Doña Juana and I cook for the party. We’re making
gallo pinto,
the national dish of Nicaragua—beans and rice flavored with onions, salt, and pepper. It is to be my final meal with the family. My book research is completed. When the Communion party is over, I am flying back to the United States, via Costa Rica (there are no direct flights from Nicaragua to the U.S.).

I’m going to miss Doña Juana and her gang. The joy and pain of this family have become part of my life. Every few minutes, over onions and beans and rice, Doña Juana and I hug each other with tears in our eyes. I have never lived so closely with people whose emotions are so open and honest, whose hopes and fears are so freely expressed.

In spite of the difficulties of their lives, or possibly because of their problems, everyone in this family laughs hard, dances with abandon, and emotes with an exuberance that is contagious. I have learned from these people how to explode with laughter and dance with joy. The Nicaraguans, who have so little, have taught me so much.

When the onions are fried and the rice and beans are ready, Doña Juana and I go outside to sit on the porch until we have to leave for the church.

“Rita,” she says to me, “you are educated. You have read many books and studied many things. May I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” I respond.

And this grandmother, mother, and loyal Sandinista, who took bullets out of kids and celebrated with her neighbors when the revolution was won, who struggles every day in a Nicaragua that is without food and parts and necessities of life, looks at me with an enigmatic expression on her face and asks, “What is a Communist?”

My visit to Nicaragua marks the end forever of my political innocence, which was already seriously damaged by the Vietnam war. I write what I saw and heard. When the book
(Inside Nicaragua; Young People’s Dreams
and Fears)
is published, I worry that it will be seen as subversive; but instead, it is included in the American Library Association’s list of Best Young Adult Books of 1988. For all my anger at the Reagan policies, I am thankful to be part of a country that honors freedom of the press. It is a theme that will be reinforced over and over again during the years I live in Indonesia.